UPDATE: Things to hate about your office

Oil and water. Radio and good music. Me and the office. Some things just don’t go together.

I wrote Friday about how much I despise the men’s restroom at my office. It’s disgusting and no, I won’t be specific.

Here’s how bad it is: I was in there Thursday and I saw a bunch of flies gathered at the window, trying to escape.

Damn you, Orville Redenbacher!

Every afternoon, offices around America resemble the entrances to K-Mart or Woolworth, bottom-rung department stores where shoppers were greeted by the sickening smell of buttered popcorn.

At 3 p.m, a dozen or get the munchies and nuke some popcorn to eat at their desks. And the whole place smells like almost-burned junk food. Whatever happened to the good old days, when the afternoons meant editors and reporters reaching into the bottom desk drawer for their trusty bottles of scotch? And what of popcorn lung?

Alas, there are studies that suggest gossip may improve productivity. If that’s the case, the Express-News should be cranking out eight different newspapers daily, running 12 Web sites and inscribing police blotter items on the head of a pin. I keed.

Welcome to the Jungle, baby. You’re going to do those TPS reports and die.

The office is like a jungle. And like the jungle, you have to learn to live by the rules. Sucking up, for example, pays massive dividends. But of course, my visionary and exemplary boss would see right through that cheesy ruse. My boss, a kind and benevolent overlord, values my honesty and integrity and that’s why my boss is the bestest boss ever.